I joined and lurked this forum about 10 years ago when I bought my first street motorcycle - a semi-crashed 2005 Kawasaki Ninja EX250F. It looks like this will be my second ever post to this forum, my first being a thread I started as a noobie rider asking about safety gear way back when. I usually look down on my past self, but my head was in the right place that time, as I'm still on 2 wheels today! And wouldn't you know it - of the 4 motorcycles currently sitting in my garage, I still have that old beginner bike. Since we're all in Covid isolation, and I'm tired of looking at that old ugly relic of the 80s, it's time to finally get around to starting that fighter build I wanted to do a decade ago.

So here's what I started with - totally stock, and overfaired:

Pulled off the fairing, drilled and mounted MX bars, mounted turn signals to the radiator, and here's where it sits right now:

This is only my starting point. These basic changes alone made such a huge difference, both to its looks, as well as comfort and control, with the upright wide handlebars. But there's still lots of work to do.

I've been on a bit of a parts ordering spree since then, and one of the next changes I need to make is with the tail light:

This tail light unit fits a Yamaha FZ-07 FZ-09 MT-07 MT-09, and this particular style has the turn signals built into it.

I'm still big on safety, so I really like how large and visible it is, without it being a big ugly bulky thing. It fits perfectly under the seat, and I'll be getting to chopping the frame this weekend!

Okay, so my to do list might have taken some priority over this build last weekend, and same with scheduled maintenance, as this neglected machine has 23k miles on it now. But I did get some chopping done!

Straightening this out:

To something like this:

So the top tube follows the bottom rim of the seat, and closes that unsightly gap:

Damn this engine looks truly tiny without stuff covering it up. Busting out the welder this week, more interesting progress soon!